For The Love And Hate Of Clients

My cry-baby face

Everyone who runs their own business - whether as a solo-preneur/freelancer or with a few employees - knows the mix of joy and pain when dealing with clients.  Clients are the life blood of any business.  They keep us up nights trying to figure out how best to serve their interests.  We skip meals and put our lives on hold when we have a client deadline.  We give our all for our clients.  So why do they drive us crazy?

Well, first of all, some customers ARE crazy.  Yes, most are lovely people you become friends with but come on - admit it.  It's the elephant in the room - some are just bug-nutty.  One of the biggest debates I had with the host of the radio show I produced was customer vs business owner.  The host's view was that the customer is always right and there are no exceptions; my view was sometimes customers are just plain crazy.

The problem is we depend on our customers, crazy or not, for our livelihoods.   And I've got a doozy I'm dealing with right now.  They're my biggest customer; ditching them isn't an option right now.  So I'm writing this to avoid saying something to them I will regret later.

The client in question started out as a wonderful client and continued that way for months and months.  Then, they got struck by lightening or stop taking their meds.  Deadlines started randomly changing, moving up ten days, then moving back 20.  I started staying up late to meet their shortened deadlines, working weekends and late into the night, and then would be told, "Oh, yeah, we moved that deadline back.  Ooops, sorry - we forgot to tell you."

Part of the issue when we get these nightmare clients is that we second-guess ourselves. Is it something we've done?  Are we misunderstanding?  It all comes down to communications and most clients, unfortunately, aren't good communicators.

As a writer, I'm in the same position as any other freelancer - everyone thinks they can do  what you do.  Of course, if they really could, they would be doing it themselves instead of hiring you.  I had a potential client last week tell me he could write his content, because he had been a content creator for a short time, but he just didn't have the time.  Unfortunately, he couldn't communicate to me exactly what he wanted, so I couldn't write what he wanted.  At the same time, by reading his emails and looking at his website, I could tell exactly why he was no longer a writer - the misspellings, incomplete sentences and horrible grammar were enough to make me weep.

I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone half the time.  I get emails from some customers saying, "We hate this article.  It's awful," but when I read their comments within the article, they only want two sentences reworked and then they love it.

I finally figured out how to deal with the ever-shifting world of nightmare customers - just give them what they want, when they ask for it, and then move on.  In the meantime, if you see me in the corner, drooling and babbling, just give me a hot cup of tea, a great book and a Snickers; I'll be ok in an hour.